Why does it feel better to replace a blue item by a purple item than to replace one purple item by another purple item, even if the difference in iLevel and effect is about the same? Should World of Warcraft extend its color scale?
- posted by Tobold Stoutfoot @ 6:54 AM Permanent Link
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The same reason why a compressed chunk of coal is more valuable than an uncompressed one: Social norms and/or a very successful advertisement campaign.

Maybe I am an axeption, but nothing feels better than to replace a purple eitem with a blue one, knowing that you just tricked the system and actually are better off this way. In the past you could do this as a druid tank - the best trinkets usually were blue.

Otherwise: The coloring of item description text was a brilliant innovation from Blizzard. Too bad that they inflated it thus that grey, white and green items are trash, blue ones are leveling standard and purple the norm.

Humans aren't made for numbers. They're a strange concept, especially when they get big. We're good at qualitative changes, such as colors.

It could also be that a color shift gives the impression of being a larger change, of moving to a whole new level. It's almost like how moving 17 to 18 isn't a big deal because it's a year, it's a big deal (at least in the US) because it means a lot more rights and responsibilities.

No, we don't need more colors. I think blue items should be much more common and epic more rare. Most of epic items should be colored blue (loot from daily quest tokens, normal mode epics) and epic items from hard mode purple.

I don't think it's a good thing to have to look at ilvl's to have a quick look at the character's equipment quality.

But more than that, the meaning of these colors need to be better defined. Leveling up, a blue item would last you 10 levels before a green item could replace it, a purple item would take 10 levels before a blue item could replace it, and by extension 20 levels before a green could. Somehow due to raiding etc, our item levels inflated over our regular levels by such a huge amount, that we're fighting at over 300% capacity.

Replacing your gear with higher ilvl gear is like gaining a level, and therefore, even in raiding, chasing epics, what we're doing is leveling.

So what is the current difference between ilvl 200 blue and purple?Purple allows for more stats, so while a blue item gives 2-3 stats, a purple would give 3-5. The quality of the stats is the same though.

If they do add more colors, than alot of what we have now, would probably be demoted to "blue" unless they added the colors up and not any inbetween.

It could be an effect of being a long-time player too - maybe it would not feel like this if the purple colored items had always been as easy to obtain as they are in Wrath? We could be suffering a backlash from drooling over purples back in the days of vanilla WoW ;)

I don't replace blue gems with purple. I believe in Wow, that blue represents moderation, intelligence, and respectability. Purple represents excess, foolishness, and narcissism. I think that Blizzard has gotten carried away with availability of purple items, and what they really need to do is not add more colors, but clamp down and make blues very hard to get in the expansion and purples near impossible. Go back to old-school and bring respectability to the color blue, certainly the most regal, rich, and respectable color there is!

If iLvl is what really matters and color is just convenient shorthand, why not simply color gear by iLvl? If it's above a certain threshold it's purple, lower and it's blue.

The issue is that some gear that should be considered equivalent by iLvl is considered disparate due to color. Make it all the same color. Problem solved.

If they do introduce a new color or colors, it should be to indicate that gear was once of a certain quality, but is now relatively weaker. Keep the highest tier purple and make anything below that iLvl a color that says "used to be great, now there's better".

People who always get the best gear will still get the best gear.

People who think purple = best will actually be right, but they won't be able to delude themselves into thinking that a full set of iLvl 200 "epics" means anything at this point in the game.

People who collect gear will still have an indicator that the piece was once powerful.

I recently replaced a higher ilvl green with a purple of *lower* ilevel. It wasn't as stupid as it sounds, the stats on it were significantly better. I had cruddy outland shoulders and I swapped them out a set of PvP purple shoulders. I think I lost like 15 SP in exchange a whole bunch of armor, int, stam, crit and spirit.

I felt kind of ridiculous doing it, and scratched my head. The color change wasn't the problem, it was taking a downgrade to get an upgrade... weird feeling

In vanilla WoW color of the item indicated rarity not quality. E.g. many MC purple drops were no better than the best blue items from the 5-man instances. It looks like this system doesn't work any more with purple items as common as green.

They should NOT change the color scale, because then M&S might notice their gear is inferior and throw a fit about the "elitists" who want to be rewarded with better gear for overcoming tougher challenges (GASP! HOW SCANDALOUS!). Right now, everything being purple obscures the gear gap (what little is left after badge changes). Let's keep it that way, because we all know how entitled the squeakiest wheels in the community are.

I am a casually hardcore player who has been playing WoW since the early days. I am not a raider or elite pvp'er but i agree that so called "Epics" are too easily obtained. Epics have somewhat been cheapened by the easy accesibility.

I believe truly epic items should be earned. Examples would be saving epic items for great raid accomplishments such as downing Arthas himself or earning all of the PVP Achievments and being the Top Rated Arena Team.

As for crafting, which i enjoy there should be some "Epic" crafting quest that can be attained at max crafting level to provide the crafter an "Epic" crafted item that is Bind on Pickup only. No more cheap epics for sale on the AH.

And as for step up gear for raiding and pvp...keep it blue just increase the stats and item level to correspond to the content.

sorry for the rant...its just that i long for a time when "Epics" were truly epic and awe inspiring.

I'd rather replace a bad epic by a good epic then a blue with an epic.

Then again, I'm the kind of guy who walked with a green + spelldamage equipment when epic +int/sta/spi items dropped in vanilla wow. I'd often prefer blue great items to badly itemized epics. Having a prettier color seems to be more attractive to casuals.

Sadly the colors don't mean much these days. Everyone can be decked out in epics. Yet one epic is not another. Someone in heroic 5 men epic gear can not be compared to someone who has gear from the newest instance. Epic <> Epic in WoW and the color is useless a few months into an expansion.

I am a bit surprised that noone noticed this , but in WoW , there is a new color : green is the new purple (and I'm not only talking about that webcomic joke). This new gear comes in the form of heroic ToC10/25 gear , which is basically normal ToC10/25 gear plus a few levels. One might say that there are still epic (purple) items. Yes , they are , but they're purples with green text which , at least on my server , has been gaining a bit of prestige (even if it's just an item from ToC10 HC , which has the same item level as Toc25 normal , it's "superior").I consider this a good move by Blizzard. The elite raiders are happy that their gear is purple-green , the rest of the raiders are happy they're in almost the same gear.Any thoughts ?